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The Daily Tar Heel

Tuition affects faculty quality

Part of tuition hike slated for retention

UNC’s ability to recruit and retain top faculty members and maintain the quality of instruction students receive will be directly affected by tuition increases for the 2010-11 school year.

The tuition and fee advisory task force will vote Wednesday on a tuition increase for out-of-state students. Revenue from both out-of-state and in-state tuition increases could generate as much as $6 million for the University in a time of budget shortfalls.

About a quarter of this money is earmarked for faculty retention and course offerings. The amount of money UNC will have to retain faculty members will depend on how much tuition is increased.

Administrators cannot raise in-state tuition more than $200, a number mandated by the state legislature. Out-of-state increases are not similarly regulated, and the task force has suggested increasing undergraduate students’ tuition by either $1,126.68 or $1,414.30.

Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Bruce Carney has said the University will need $1.5 million for faculty retention if the school wants to remain competitive.

The lower tuition increase for out-of-state students would generate only about $860,000 for faculty retention. The larger increase would provide $1.49 million.

While Carney expressed apprehension about losing faculty this year, UNC will not see as big an outside threat as it has previously. In speeches this year, Chancellor Holden Thorp has said few institutions are actively hiring, especially traditional competitors such as the University of California system.

But Carney said recruitment and retention money could go further this year because of the downturn. He said the tuition increase would play a crucial role in enabling the University to retain its best professors and lecturers, as well as bring in new ones.

“We put a lot of emphasis in trying to attract the very best faculty, and we want to keep them here,” he said. “If we don’t vote a tuition increase, we simply won’t be able to compete.”

When faculty members are offered jobs from other universities, UNC can make counteroffers. Money for faculty retention would fund these offers. Carney said the University spent about $1 million on salary increases for faculty retention last school year.

Carney said the College of Arts and Sciences’ biggest competitors last year were the universities of Texas and Utah, Yale University and Duke University. He said private schools pose a threat because they can offer higher salaries.

The UNC system receives $2 million annually in the state budget for recruitment efforts, and UNC-Chapel Hill usually sees a large share.

John McGowan, director of the UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities, which received recognition from the Board of Trustees for its success at faculty retention, said UNC needs funding to keep the best faculty members.

“It’s the best teachers and the best scholars who get raided by other schools,” he said. “Retention directly affects the worth of a Carolina degree.”

McGowan said UNC’s retention success has a huge impact on academic quality.

“Obviously, if you keep losing people, you have to keep hiring new people — and you can’t always hire the best,” he said.

Last year, 20 faculty members received outside offers. Of those, 12 accepted UNC’s counteroffers, seven left for competing schools and one has still not decided, said Karen Gil, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, in an e-mail.



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.

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